The Countryside in Late Antiquity

Chapter 2 explores the built landscape of Oriens, and deals with the important question of land tenure. Although it appears that wealthy elites were important landholders in the region, and that the salaried bureaucratic classes of the empire were both aggressive and successful at gaining control over large land areas, The chapter argues that a large number of free-holding farmers persisted and that their ranks were joined by numerous less-holders who held long-term contracts on the land. A considerable quantity of material suggests that villages were quite prosperous in this period, and that agriculture was probably the major underpinning of that wealth. This chapter also details the characteristics of late antique villages and farmhouses and links their morphology with the type and scale of production conducted on the land to which they belonged.

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